Twin Telepathy

By Guy Lyon Playfair

From the publisher’s website: Is there a ‘special connection’ between twins? Can they read each other’s minds? Are they telepathic? These questions are often asked, but have never been convincingly answered until now.

The author became interested in the subject when he was given vivid first-hand testimony of how a man whose twin brother had been shot dead had reacted several miles away at the exact time. This prompted him to embark on a thorough search of the literature and collect accounts of similar examples of apparent telepathy, some dating back to the 18th century, to question numerous twins regarding their own experiences, to compile a substantial file of case histories, and eventually to help set up properly controlled scientific experiments in which telepathy could be seen to take place on a polygraph chart, two of which have now been published in peer-reviewed journals.

As he makes clear in this ground-breaking book, the first ever to explore the ‘special twin connection’ in detail, the answer is simple: some twins are telepathy-prone and some, probably the majority, are not. How can this be, you might wonder? Aren’t all identical twins supposed to be identical in all respects?

They are not. The fact is that, as Orwell might have put it, some twins are more identical than others. What seems to make the difference is exactly when division of the fertilized zygote (egg) takes place. This can take place almost immediately, or up to twelve days later. Without going into detail here, what this means is that ‘late splitters’ develop extremely close bonds after birth, bonds that can last a lifetime, whereas ‘early splitters’ become more independent, and regard their twins just like an ordinary brother or sister. Sure enough, when experiments were carried out in London and Copenhagen, on each occasion it was a late-splitting pair who showed the clearest evidence for telepathy on their polygraph charts. The often heard critical complaint that here is no repeatable experiment for any kind of psychic effect is no longer true.

This new revised and updated edition contains the most comprehensive survey yet written on the history of research into twin telepathy. The author explains why experiments have generally been unsuccessful in the past, and why those that he helped design have been consistently successful, and point the way ahead for future researchers.

He also explains that a better understanding of the special twin connection is of more than academic interest, especially to parents, some of whom already know that it can save lives and has already done so.

Earlier editions of this book were well received by such authorities as psychologist Stanley Krippner, a former president of the Parapsychological Association, for whom it ‘reads like an intriguing detective story’, and Rupert Sheldrake, who has contributed a Foreword in which he states:

‘For many years I have been looking in vain for authoritative research on this intriguing subject. At last I have found it, in this book’.

Colin Wilson, in his Introduction predicts that the book ‘will obviously become a classic of psychical research.’

Twin Telepathy. White Crow Books, March 2012. ISBN-13: 978-1908733443

Reviewed for the SPR by:

Search this site:

"I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud." - C.G. Jung